There was Chennapattanam and then there was Madras.
About 357 years later, in 1996, she became Chennai. And whatever she may be called 378 years from now, she will always remain the "Queen of the Coromandel"!
Come wander around this blog. It will give you a peek into her soul!!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

From here to California

Shri Seetharama Rao firmly believed in the saying "we are what we eat". It was his endeavor therefore to move away from the more traditional choultry and sarai into hotels. His plank was to have hotels with a difference and the one he chose was to emphasize that this hotel would be completely vegetarian. In the 1920s, it was a novel concept, but Seetharama's bet that people wold love to have 'home food' without having to cook it was more or less spot on and so Hotel Dasaprakash became one of the happening hotspots of Madras in the '20s and '30s. It was not just those times. Hotel Dasaprakash was active well into the first few years of this millennium, even though it had stopped being the favourite watering hole for the kind of people it used to attract in its early years - and even a while later. One can imagine the Freddie Threepwood kind of gentleman cutting up the rugs somewhere in this Art Deco building during the swinging sixties, but sometime after that, Hotel Dasaprakash became one more of those haunts for salesmen travelling on a budget, needing to keep up the appearances. There are quite a few cars parked inside the gates. But the gates themselves have been shut for almost two years now, as the owners of the property try to make up thier minds about whose offer to accept for the building. There is little chance of Hotel Dasaprakash getting back to its glory days, for the new generation seems to have cashed in on the popularity of the brand - Hotel Dasaprakash has a property in Ooty and is also part of Bangalore's history - with the Dasaprakash restaurant in Santa Clara, California, USA. Maybe one day the brand will come back to its place of birth!